From an Illinois Railway Museum press release November 15, 2019;
Union, Illinois -- The Illinois Railway Museum is pleased to announce that it has acquired one of the last traditional single-unit streetcars ever built for service in North America. This new addition to the museum's collection allows IRM to trace the history of urban rail transport from 1859 all the way to present day.
The streetcar is Toronto Transit Commission number 4034, a CLRV (Canadian Light Rail Vehicile) built in 1979 by Hawker-Siddeley of Canada. The CLRV was designed in the mid-1970s as a modern streetcar that could replace aging PCC Streetcars in the few North American cities that had not replaced their streetcars with buses. It is one of the last single-unit streetcars built, as newer streetcar systems have instead used multi-car articulated light rail vehicles. The CLRV was a remarkable success with nearly 200 of the cars carrying passengers in Toronto until this year.
Car 4034 is more than 30 years newer than IRM's next oldest streetcar, a PCC streetcar built for Chicago in 1948 and known as the "Green Hornet." The Green Hornets lasted for only 10 years in Chicago until they were scrapped in 1958. The TTC CLRV streetcar lasted til this year 2019. Built in 1859 and continued through cable cars, early trolley cars, the Toronto PCC Car known as the "Red Rocket" and finally the Articulated and Single Unit CLRVs. The IRM intends to operate its CLRV in demonstration service for museum visitors following work to adapt the Toronto car to IRM's track gauge. --- fini
This article appeared in my December 2019 Dayton, Ohio Railway Historical Society Newsletter. sincerely yours railbear601
I thought I would clear up a little confusion about the New Streetcar acquired by the Illinois Railway Museum.....
The TTC obtained both there Articulated and Single Unit CLRVs in the early 1980's. Besides 200 single units, they had 10 Articulated Units that were built and imported from Sweden. All will end service in 2019 when TTC acquires there full compliment of 5 unit articulated Bombardier (built in Canada) Streetcars. The reason the CLRVs still operate in Toronto til this year was the fact that Bombardier "farmed out" some of the parts to there new streetcar and the first articulated streetcars that arrived on the scene were "poorly" built. This caused a slow down (from 2009 until 2019) for the new five unit streetcars to arrive in Toronto. The new streetcar order in Toronto for $1.2 billion dollars took 10 years to build.
Also the Canadian Light Rail Cars were much heavier than the PCC Streetcars which caused the TTC to rebuild over the years all of it's track system. The CLRV Streetcars were excellent vehicles having air-conditioning and ABS Brakes.
Now that the Bombardier Streetcar has arrived on the scene and the old CLRVs are leaving, the new 5 Unit Bombardier Streetcar will lose there trolley poles to pantographs. This will be advantageous as there will be no electronic switches in the overhead wires.
Back in the early 1980s, Toronto, Canada had one of the largest PCC Streetcar Fleets in the World and many of there PCC Streetcars were obtained second hand from Streetcar Companies being abandoned in the States. eg: I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and in 1950, The Cincinnati Street Railway sold 50 of there PCC Streetcars to Toronto. This was the First Order of a long procession of used cars to Toronto, Canada.
Today, the city of San Francisco has one of the largest fleets of original PCC Streetcars operating on the "E" and "F" Streetcar lines.
You can search out The Streetcars in most cities in the world by using You Tube.....railbear601
